I was trying to be a writer, and I was kind of getting sidetracked, so I started doing cartoons as a form of expression.

Traditionally, the only way I come up with cartoons is by sitting at my desk and thinking.

I started trying to be a writer and failed for years. I tried novels, short stories, sitcoms, movies, plays, anything. And then, to support myself, I had millions of jobs on the fringes of show business.

James Thurber was an inspiration because his drawings were so primitive. I am self-taught - I didn't go to art school - so I thought when I started doing them, 'If James Thurber can be a cartoonist, I can,' because his stuff is very raw.

One identity is as a television writer, which is very classically Southern California, but another of my personae is as a New Yorker cartoonist.

The Western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let's see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons.